Oolite Bulletins

I suppose this would be a core mod... and a step away from the Elite™ righteous path, so I won't be holding my breath!

BUT... what if, when you were witnessed by one of the GalCop rozzers, doing something a bit naughty, you could keep your record clean by eliminating the witness? (before they could transmit the evidence back to base)

COP-KILLA!!

Your thoughts?

I like! I could imagine a little timer on the screen to indicate how long you have to off the officer.

And once such a timer is in-place, there might even be more "against-the-clock" content possible...

You know, I'm pretty sure this can be done via oxp!

I promise to spend a few thoughts on it.

I am quite sure, though, that the "punishment" routine, that makes you an offender or fugitive as soon as the police witnesses your wrongdoing, is hardcoded, and not part of any script. So it might be not that easíly doable via an OXP.

If I come up with a way to do it, however, I would love to include it in Anarchies.oxp.

I'm pretty sure its done with the policeAI of responding to "OFFENCE_COMMITTED" so should be OXPable with a replacement policeAI. Becoming a fugitive for shooting a ship with POLICE class is hard-coded though, so shooting down the Cop would still make you a criminal even though you could alter the behaviour of the police in terms of how they respond to spotting a ship committing a crime. A deathaction switching the killing ships status back to its orginal one could get round this, but that would be tricky to do with all the OXP cops (Swat Vipers, Condors etc).

You're right, LB. The lines in route1patrolAI.plist (and identically in route2patrolAI.plist) are these:
(stationAI.plist has a similar entry, but it awards 15)

The key-method is markTargetForOffence:, which apparently will increase the legalStatus_number by the value specified. I guess it may somehow be possible to start some kind of timer instead, and delay the markTargetForOffence:. (setting a variable, replacing the "markTarget... ...groupAttackTarget"-part with a pauseAI:, putting the "markTarget... ...groupAttackTarget" in the next UPDATE? - may quite certainly not work?!?)

But the catch is, as you mentioned as well, that killing the police vessel automatically raises legalStatus_number by some 70 or 75 points, IIRC. And this is hard-coded behaviour. I don't know whether we can (with a reasonable amount of scripting) get around that. Besides, I don't know if I want to. Making it effectively legal to kill the police doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

I think some further reasoning is required at this point.

Perhaps this is the catch the wanna-be-pirate has to live with: Either getting a bad record for doing wrong in front of the police. Or killing the police before they can file his misconduct, but by doing so making his record even worse. NB: The heavier legal rating for killing (actually it's just for attacking, you're punished at the moment your first shot hits) is somehow balanced by the fact that it is awarded only once per system. Once you have attacked your first police vessel (or main station), you may wholeheartedly wipe out the entire police (and military!) force in that system, without your legal rating suffering any further deterioration.

If I may say so: Right On, Commander!

Cmdr. McLane wrote:

But the catch is, as you mentioned as well, that killing the police vessel automatically raises legalStatus_number by some 70 or 75 points, IIRC. And this is hard-coded behaviour...... Once you have attacked your first police vessel (or main station), you may wholeheartedly wipe out the entire police (and military!) force in that system, without your legal rating suffering any further deterioration.

Yes hitting a police vessel is hard coded and will give you a legal record of 64 points (= fugitive). However, I never realised that the status does not raise after the first attack of a police. But you are (partialy) right. markTargetForOffence is not adding the value to the legalStatus but is raising the legalStatus to at least that value with an OR operation.

I am not sure but I think it is a bitwise OR. This means that when the legalStatus has changed between the two markTargetForOffence commands it is still possible that the second command raises the legalStatus a little further.
(e.g. 64OR64 stays 64, but 63OR64 becomes 127)

This is a really great idea that adds a little to the huge amount of choice we have in this game, and I think that that has always been one of the main appeals of the Elite genre.


I hope it's possible to do via OXP. or whether the main code can easily be amended to make it so

What I had in mind was to change the status to 0 after killing the copper/witness within the allotted time. And as a background story, there could be a new cop frequency jamming device to give you a clear five (or whatever) minutes to kill the cop(s). Could be activated by a change to offender status... Also, it would be useless within the aegis, since the station itself vould record the offence directly. Installing the jammer could also give you a 5% (or whatever %) chance to be an instant fugitive in systems with high law and order.... Commander McLane, would that fit well within Anarchies.oxp?

PS in 1.70 there's a javascript problem: the lowest legal status that can be given to the player is 1 instead of 0 (clean), but even so, it's way better than 70+.
That bug doesn't exist in 1.71 trunk, nor in legacy script!

I don't think this whole thing should be about "a fun way to clear your criminal record", but rather "a way to avoid increasing your criminal record". Let me explain:

Say you are already Offender with a legal status of 40. You kill an innocent trader while the cops are watching you. The cops need a little time to update your file, let's say 10 to 15 seconds. So your status is not raised instantly to 47 (through an "OR 7" operation), but only after these 10 to 15 seconds. If you manage to prevent the cops from communicating with their base (euphemism for: kill them), before the countdown is ended, your file remains unchanged. So there are no points added to your legal status. But I see no reason why the pre-existing 40 points should be wiped out in the process, as the basic idea is that your existing file remains unchanged.

So I don't think the status should be changed to 0 after killing the witness. It should just remain the same as it was before.

I really would like us to agree on this. Can we?

I agree that only the penalty for the latest misdemeanour should be wiped, should the relevant police be 'persuaded' to forget about it.

This makes perfect sense to me, and tallies with real-life events.

(Not that I'm condoning this kind of behaviour!)

You have always been able to clean your record by using the escape capsule, which to be fair is a bit of a cheat, so it would be good to eliminate this too.

Ahm, just my 2Cr:

The cops need a little time to update your file, let's say 10 to 15 seconds. So your status is not raised instantly to 47 (through an "OR 7" operation), but only after these 10 to 15 seconds. If you manage to prevent the cops from communicating with their base (euphemism for: kill them), before the countdown is ended, your file remains unchanged.

Does this make sense at all? A computer system more than a millenium from now needs a cop to enter a change manually or via voice input and then, in addition, the information needs to be radioed to GalCop HQ of the system?

Wouldn`t it be much more likely that each and every police vessel would have a completely automated system, perhaps even an AI, onboard, that automatically ...

* checked that a crime had happened
* immediately sends the information to the local GalCop Headquarters

... thereby ensuring that whatever happens any criminal act, record AND witnesses can`t be just done away with by placing a q-bomb and then really stepping on the gas pedal?

This whole thing would make sense if there was something akin to an extremely illegal equipment device that jammed the transfer of information from the police vessel, and while the AIs of the offending Commander`s vessel and the police vessel(s) are engaging in cyberspace battle for 10 to 15 seconds, the message COULD be stopped by destroying all witnesses in this timespan.

And it would only make sense that the legal register stays as it was, not be reset to clean, because why would it do that? The only thing you could do with a frequency jammer would be to stop GalCop itself from being informed of ADDITIONAL offenses.

Attacking a police vessel and getting away with it because the guy in there didn`t type fast enough just doesn`t fit into Oolite`s year 3200-something in my book.

What do you say?

L

Well, 30-something century computers don't seem to be all that great, really. There are no true AIs -- no ships flown by computers alone -- and even with automated support we all have to work hard ourselves to fly, fight and so on. Given that no distiction is made between computers from, say, a tech level 14 world and a tech level 2 world, it looks like -- for some reason -- computing has stalled at a fairly basic level. So there's a chance that there could be a delay between the police spotting a crime, and establishing a secure channel to update a criminal record databank.

That said, though, I think it would make better game-sense for a player to have to acquire an illegal cop-jammer before this option is open to them. Maybe there could be a small percentage chance that a passing cop -- at any time, even if the player is peacefully minding his own business -- might notice something squirrely with his systems, and decide to investigate?

Rather than equipment, what about changing the AI so there is a chance of the Cop offering to accept a bribe to keep his mouth shut? (Just sends an alternative hail and sets a variable). Your legal status does not immedatley go up. At the station you pay up or your legal status is increased.